“[O]f immense academic interest to Africanist scholars in art history, anthropology and Black/Africana Studies. [It] is well organized, the writing is lucid. . . . It is a very compelling piece of work.”
—Rowland O. Abiodun, John C. Newton Professor of Fine Arts & Black Studies, Amherst College
“Okediji has a gift for writing—his language is colorful, evocative, and compelling. [His] argument is an original and compelling one supported with rich visual, historical, and cultural data and convincingly argued. It has wide implications for all future writing on the contemporary arts being created by global post-colonial diasporas, whether African or not.”
—Henry J. Drewal, Evjue-Bascom Professor of Art History, University of Wisconsin–Madison
African Renaissance: New Forms, Old Images in Yoruba Art describes, analyzes, and interprets the historical and cultural contexts of an African art renaissance using the twentieth- and twenty-first-century transformation of ancient Yoruba artistic heritage. Juxtaposing ancient and contemporary Yoruba art, Moyo Okediji defines this art history through the lens of colonialism, an experience that served to both destroy ancient art traditions and revive Yoruba art in the twentieth century.
With vivid reproductions of paintings, prints, and drawings, Okediji describes how Yoruba art has replenished and redefined itself. Okediji groups the text into several broadly overlapping periods that intricately detail the journey of Yoruba art and artists: first through oppression by European colonialism, then the attainment of Nigeria’s independence and the new nation’s subsequent military coup, and ending with present-day native Yoruban artists fleeing their homeland.
